stood gazing after her husband, until she saw him enter the tavern
mentioned as being kept by a man named Parker, when, with a heavy,
fluttering sigh, she passed into the house, and ascended to the
chamber from which she had, a few minutes before, come down.

It was past eleven o'clock. The two domestics had retired, and Mrs.
Wilkinson was alone with her sick child. Ella's moan of suffering
came on her ear the instant she re-entered the room, and she stepped
quickly to the crib, and bent over to look into its face. The cheeks
of the child were flushed with fever to a bright crimson, and she
was moving her head from side to side, and working her lips as if
there was something in her mouth. Slight twitching motions of the
arms and hands were also noticed by the mother. Her eyes were partly
open.

"Will Ella have a drink of water?" said Mrs. Wilkinson, placing her
hand under the child's head, and slightly raising it from the
pillow.

But Ella did not seem to hear.

"Say--love, will you have some water?"

There was no sign that her words reached the child's ears.

A deeper shade of trouble than that which already rested on the
mother's face glanced over it.

"Ella! Ella!" Mrs. Wilkinson slightly shook the child.